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More than 150 years after it sank off Cape Hatteras inside the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, a woolen coat discarded by a Union sailor trying to escape the doomed ship is approaching another milestone. Found inside the vessel's famous gun turret not long after it was recovered from the Atlantic in August 2002, the rumpled expanse of Navy blue cloth had to be chiseled and coaxed from the grasp of the thick marine concretion that entrapped it — a painstaking process that took archaeologists and conservators from the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary and Mariners' Museum several days. But that was only the start of a decade-long treatment program that included hundreds...

Related "USS Monitor" Articles

More than 150 years after it sank off Cape Hatteras inside the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, a woolen coat discarded by a Union sailor trying to escape the doomed ship is approaching another milestone.
Found inside the vessel's famous gun turret not...

No one watching the Union fleet in Hampton Roads in late April 1864 could have failed to notice when it began to swell to historic proportions.
Stretching out nearly 10 miles, the giant collection of warships, transports, auxiliary vessels and barges...

Most of the sailors in the Union’s powerful North Atlantic Blockading Squadron were sound asleep when a small, nearly silent craft slipped through the early morning darkness of April 9, 1864 toward the flagship USS Minnesota off Newport News Point.
But...

Twenty-five days after the ironclad CSS Virginia inflicted the United States' worst naval defeat before Pearl Harbor, 10 thunderous cannon blasts sounded from the beach at Fort Monroe across the far reaches of Hampton Roads.
Fired from the immense...

About 22 miles long and only 4 miles wide, the area that became Newport News was first settled in 1619.
In 1896, that community — the former seat of Warwick County — became the separate city of Newport News. Warwick County was one of the eight original...

Museums and sites can help you track the story of our region. From the earliest settlers to the space explorers, Hampton Roads museums tell a continuous story of the importance of our area.
History museums
1. Air Power Park. Vintage military jets,...

No one watching the Union fleet in Hampton Roads in late April 1864 could have failed to notice when it began to swell to historic proportions.
Stretching out nearly 10 miles, the giant collection of transports, auxiliary vessels, barges and warships...

The Mariners’ Museum reopened its giant USS Monitor conservation lab this week after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which administers the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary — agreed to provide a one-year funding allocation of...

Long before the start of the expedition that recovered the USS Monitor gun turret from the bottom of the Atlantic in 2002, Navy divers and NOAA archaeologists working to save the historic Civil War ship knew they might run into the remains of lost...

WASHINGTON — Two sailors who perished 150 years ago in the sinking of one of history's most famous warships took a solemn step toward their final resting place Thursday when their remains were transferred to a Navy ceremonial guard at Dulles International...

When your job is writing about history, it's hard to have a week better than the one just past.
One of Jamestown's oldest riddles was finally answered in pretty conclusive fashion by the butchered skull of a 14-year-old English girl -- and this first...

Two of the nation's foremost underwater archaeologists began work in the river off Yorktown Beach Wednesday morning, surveying the previously undetected wreck of a ship that may have been scuttled by the British during the Revolution. ...

Blackbeard may get all the attention. Black Bart was even more feared. But for my money, the most important pirate to cast a shadow across Hampton Roads was an almost completely unknown Englishman named William Dampier.
Exactly what he was doing in the...

Conservators at The Mariners' Museum were preparing to shut down a 5,000-square-foot treatment lab and stop work on the historic gun turret of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor Thursday following the expiration of an agreement with the National Oceanic...

With two of the nation's most storied shipyards toiling on its shores, Hampton Roads has long been known as the builder of some of the world's most historic naval vessels. Here are stand-out hulls from Norfolk Naval Shipyard, which launched its first...

Hampton Roads museums offer numerous exhibits exploring the region's historic role in the Civil War.
Here are some thumbnail descriptions of some of the attractions you can expect to see during the 150th anniversary of the war:
Casemate Museum....

The Battle of the Ironclad Chefs returns March 10 to The Mariners’ Museum.The unique event offers a competition between two markedly different Civil War-era cooks — a plantation slave and a Union cook on the deck of the USS Monitor — that would have...

Despite 150 years of fame as one of history's landmark warships, the USS Monitor is the ironclad Civil War marvel that almost wasn't.Not until shipbuilders at Portsmouth's Gosport Navy Yard had labored around the clock for months to transform the...

Hopelessly outmatched on the seas, the Confederacy built an iron monster that launched a furious arms race, setting the stage for the bloody collision that changed the course of naval history.--Battle of Hampton Roads: Construction of the USS VirginiaNo...